


Once Upon The Avengers...

by MsMockingbird



Series: The Mockingverse [27]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Baking, F/F, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Other, Quests, SortaAU, Still the Mockingverse, fairy tale AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2019-10-26 19:58:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 17,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17752505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsMockingbird/pseuds/MsMockingbird
Summary: In a small village, nestled in the forest at the outskirts of the Kingdom there lived a baker girl. She had no family and no past; she’d appeared in the forest one summer’s day in a simple white shift, alone and frightened....





	1. Of Baking and Birds

**Author's Note:**

> This is still the Mockingverse. Seriously. Stick with me on this one.

In a small village, nestled in the forest at the outskirts of the Kingdom there lived a baker girl. She had no family and no past; she’d appeared in the forest one summer’s day in a simple white shift, alone and frightened. 

The villagers were, as a rule, kindly people. They took her to the Inn and offered her food. There they realized it was not being alone that made the girl so frightened. 

She was filled with fear for everything in the world. She was frightened of the fire on the candles, and the gentle old dogs sleeping on the hearth. She was terrified of the horses and even the nanny goat the Innkeeper kept for milk. She could not give a name and she could never tell anyone how she had come to be in the middle of the woods, on a lumber path, barefoot and shaking with terror. 

The only things that did not scare her half to death were the little birds that gathered about the yard of the Baker. The old woman was half-blind and grumbled constantly but she never begrudged the little beaks a few seeds from the day’s baking. In the winter she would bake extra bread for the Herdswoman and in return receive extra butter. She would mix it with what she could spare of her stock and leave it out for the birds, to help them survive the long winter. So it was there was never less than a dozen small chirping forms outside the Bakery windows, hopping and pecking and looking askance at any who dared walk near by. 

When the frightened nameless girl was persuaded to take a walk in the soft shoes the Innkeeper and her wife had provided (left behind by some guest long ago) she came upon the small birds quite suddenly. Instead of quaking with fear, she knelt in the dirt before the door way and whistled mostly beautifully. The little birds came to her hand, to her obvious delight. When she smiled her face and form grew radiant, her golden hair seemed to catch the sun and her blue eyes sparkled like jewels.

So it was that the elderly Baker took the nameless girl as her apprentice. They were well matched, for the half-blind old woman could not see the girl flinch from every new thing, nor see the silent tears of shame at her fear creep down her cheeks until the heat of the oven dried them. She only heard the girl’s soft voice speaking kindly to the birds, only smelled the richness of the bread she baked, only tasted the light and delicate texture of the cakes she constructed.

Soon the village grew renowned in the province for their shy, frightened baker girl. She never could tell anyone her name and so in time she was named for the little creatures that brought her to her craft: Little Bird, they called her for though she had strong arms and tireless legs she was small and delicate and tentative as any of the flighty sparrows crowded at her window sill. 

When the winter came, the elderly Baker died in her sleep, finally at peace to know both her bakery and her birds would be well cared for. 

So Little Bird became the Baker and thrived in the village, as much as anyone who could be sent screaming to her lock her door by an errant cat appearing can thrive. 

Seasons passed. The village grew prosperous because of their new addition, with people traveling far and wide for the cookies and biscuits and breads Little Bird baked with such skill.

Then one day another person emerged from the woods.

The King’s Hunter appeared, looking grim and dark and cold, even in the streaming summer sunlight. He carried his fearsome black bow and famous silver arrows. His countenance was filled with anger for whatever he had been in the woods hunting—he would not speak of what manner of beast he pursued to their little village—whatever he had hunted had escaped him. He swung off his big black horse with the purple tack in the Inn yard and demanded food as he stalked inside. The stable boy rushed to care for his horse as he left it, uncaring. 

Upon seeing him perhaps the villagers could understand for once how Little Bird felt all the time: the Hunter was known in the land as a man without so much as a single spark of humor or joy in his heart. He obeyed the Summer Knight, the cruel commander of the King’s Guard, without question and was rumored to be the lover of the Lady of Spiders, who could kill with but a thought.

He sat in the corner of the Inn, drinking moodily from a tankard of the best beer they could provide and wolfing down a bowl of their best stew. He seemed to find it all barely adequate until he bit into the bread.

Fresh baked it was from that morning’s delivery and spread with new salt butter. It needed no other gold for its crown, the smooth richness blending perfectly with the sharp strong bite of the sourdough bread.

“Who made this?” He demanded, his voice harsh and hard. “This bread—who?” 

The Innkeeper bustled over, scraping and bowing. “That is the work of our own Little Bird, the Baker. She’s a timid little thing but cannot be matched with dough and flour and sugar. If you are enjoying it, I’ll be sure to pass on your commendations, my lord.”

“I’ll do it myself,” he snapped and left the Inn without another word (or payment), retrieving his horse as he went.

But his intentions were not filled with honor, to praise one woman’s good handy work.

For the Hunter did not relish returning to the castle empty handed. If he could not bring back the beast he had been pursuing he would bring back prey of another kind.

And so it was that Little Bird was snatched bodily from her bakery, where she tended her namesakes and made beautiful things to delight the eye and stomach. The only home she could remember knowing.

The Hunter held her in his lap and galloped away down the road that lead out of the forest, ignoring her screams and tears.

Her fear meant nothing to him. His mission was all.


	2. Of the Castle At the Heart Of The Kingdom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet the Lady of Spiders and the Summer Knight

And so Little Bird was brought—crying and afraid—to the Castle At The Heart Of The Kingdom, where the Unseen King lived surrounded by high walls and fearsome guards.

When the Hunter and Little Bird arrived in the courtyard, there awaited the Summer Knight in his blue armor and the Lady of Spiders in her black cloak. The Summer Knight’s handsome face was dark with anger; the Lady of Spiders nothing seemed nothing but shadows swirling.

The Hunter dismounted and held Little Bird by one wrist, bruising her delicate skin, even though in two days and nights of constant travel she had never once tried to escape him. He pulled her towards the waiting pair, his cold eyes devoid of any emotion and his face blank as stone. 

The Summer Knight was most wroth, that was clear before he even spoke. The Lady of Spiders stood still as the statue she was rumored to be, her head tilted down so that not even her eyes could be seen under her hood. 

“You were sent for the Visjar bird, Hunter, not…whatever that is,” the Summer Knight snapped as the Hunter drew Little Bird close to the pair. “Time and again you fail at your mission, until it seems you don’t even want to succeed and now you drag some weeping peasant girl into my presence.”

The Hunter’s hand tightened on Little Bird’s wrist, until she cried out and fell to her knees before the Summer Knight and the Lady of Spiders. “Here,” the Hunter said above her bowed head. “Just taste this.”

It seemed the Hunter had snatched some of her pastries from the bakery at the same time as he had snatched her. The Summer Knight took a bite of the stale confection and made a noise like a hum of pleasure, though from his lips it still sounded cruel and angry. 

“The bird will appear again at the next full moon. Until then, at least we can serve the King the best bread in the land, and cakes to make him swoon with pleasure,” the Hunter said.

“Well enough. But this is the last straw, Hunter. If you fail to kill the bird one more time, I’ll have the Winter Knight take your eyes, even as he took the Falconer’s arm, and cast you blind and useless into the wilderness.” With that last cruel sentence, the Summer Knight departed back into the castle, leaving Little Bird to weep, the Hunter to curse and the Lady of Spiders to stand motionless and silent, shrouded in darkness even in the bright of the sun. 

The Hunter dragged Little Bird to her feet. “Stop that noise,” he snarled, silencing her tears. 

Then the Lady of Spiders spoke—or so Little Bird assumed it was she who spoke, for the voice was not unlike a woman’s, ghostly and filled with grave secrets. She spoke only a word, soft as dead leaves falling to the ground. 

“Afraid,” she said.

It was whispered the Lady of Spiders could speak only in single words, and move only straight lines, and never showed anyone her true face. Little Bird looked up—for the Lady was taller than she, thin and long legged like her namesakes— and saw only a blank red mask under the hood of the black cloak, without even space for eyes to see from or a mouth to speak from.

“She’s afraid of everything. A useless coward, but a skilled baker,” The Hunter said, coldly. Everything he did was cold and hard as frozen ground; there was no softness or happiness in the Hunter. 

“No,” said the Lady of Spiders.

The Hunter stared in surprise. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

“You,” said the Lady clad all in darkness and blood. Then she twitched her feet into motion, walking straight for the outside wall of the castle. When she was close enough to touch it with the pale smooth face of her mask she turned precisely on her heel and walked back in another straight line, towards the grand front doors that still gaped open behind the Summer Knight.

“What do you mean, ‘you’?” The Hunter called furiously to her back but the Lady of Spiders did not pause or turn or pay him the slightest mind. 

The Hunter and Little Bird stood together in the empty courtyard of the Castle At The Center Of The World, him seething in anger and her trembling in fear.

“She thinks I’M afraid,” the Hunter snapped, starting up the steps himself, tugging Little Bird carelessly behind him, not caring that she stumbled and tripped on the stones. “What do I have to be afraid of? I am the greatest Hunter in the realm. My arrows can cut apart a blade of grass two leagues away. I can strike a fleeing deer in the eye without looking at it. I am the Hunter. I am not afraid.”

So the man who was not afraid dragged the girl who was afraid of everything through the empty halls of the Castle until they reached the kitchens at very back of the stone halls. 

There he left, alone, without another word.

With nothing else to do, Little Bird searched around the pantry, found flour and sugar, yeast and salt, and began to bake.

But even as she kneaded the dough for her first loaf of bread, there whispered in her mind a single thought:

_If this Castle was the heart of the Realm, why were there no servants?_


	3. Of Bread and Birds and Other Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the mornings at the Castle At The Centre Of The Realm—each day, every day—Little Bird made bread....

In the mornings at the Castle At The Centre Of The Realm—each day, every day—Little Bird made bread. She made loaves from the beautiful white flour in the larder, and rough peasant bread from the starter in the cold room. Then while it cooled she made sheets of pastries and biscuits, sweets and cookies. She scented sugar with cinnamon powder and ginger. She made pastes of nuts and salt, using the oils in her breads.

She made jam with the fresh summer fruits in the baskets on countertops. She churned butter from new cream and flavored it with herbs and spices she found in the clever little stoneware jars lining her shelves. 

And she wondered why each day, every day each jar and basket and bin and shelf looked exactly the same as the day before. 

Each day, every day, the Hunter came and sat in her kitchen, at a stool next to the broad window in the outside door. Little Bird wondered ‘had there been a window there the day she arrived?’ And then decided of course there must have been, for did not the Hunter always sit there on that stool, by that window, and eat her bread spread with her butter and jam? Did he not always bring her rabbits to roast in her ovens, plump and tender? 

Each day, every day, the Hunter sat in silence which suited Little Bird. In his silence she heard his loneliness, his worry, his uncertainty. He reminded her a little of the birds that had named her: tentative, afraid, but trying so hard not to show it.

Not like her, flinching and cringing at every little noise he made. Each day, every day, she was still afraid.

But in time even a creature as fearful and timid as Little Bird can grow to trust something, if that something never hurts her again, and eats her bread with obvious relish, and brings her wild game to cook.

So one day, unlike any other day, she spoke to him, as she kneaded garlic and rosemary scented dough against the counter top. 

“This bird you hunt? Why does the King want it dead?”

He started, so that the legs of his stool scraped on the stone floor. She looked over and he was staring at her, his blue eyes cool and hard as always but searching now. The intensity of his gaze frightened her so she looked down again. 

“The Visjar bird? It is supposed to be the harbinger of doom, the doom of the Kingdom. Obviously, the King would want it dead.” He spoke harshly and coldly, as he always did. There was no humor, no joy in the Hunter.

Each day, every day, Little Bird thought how wrong that seemed. “It seems sad, to want to kill something that is the only one of its kind. Why not capture it and take it far away? Beyond the mountains?” Little Bird offered, softly. Though she ate the plump fowl he sometimes brought her with relish it was one thing to eat a fat common duck from the marsh and another to kill a thing that lived no where else in the world. That seemed almost a…sin…to her. 

“There is nothing beyond the mountains but death and pain,” the Hunter snapped. 

She flinched . “I am so sorry. I did not know you’d seen it.”

For a long time there was silence from the Hunter, and Little Bird shaped her loaves with care, not looking up.

“I haven’t…seen..” the Hunter murmured and then his stool scraped on the floor again and he hustled out of the room. He moved quietly for such a big man.

When he was gone, Little Bird felt sad. He was cold and hard and angry all the time but she felt oddly safe when he was near by. He’d left the crust of his bread on the window sill so she went over and tore it into small pieces, then put them in her palm and whistled softly. The songbirds that sheltered in the royal gardens came flocking to her hand, pecking and scratching at her skin to snap up the last of the crust. When it was gone they flew away, twittering into the sunlight.

Behind her she heard the fall of a footstep. Thinking it was the Hunter returned, miraculously Little Bird was not afraid. She turned to greet him.

In the door way from the castle loomed a figure in blue-black steel plate, red dripping like blood from the star emblem on its chest. It stalked forward in sorcerous silence, a long blade free in its hand.

The Winter Knight, the demonic executioner of the King.

Little Bird screamed and threw herself backwards, tumbling out of the open window to land on the grass and dirt of the courtyard. Scrambling up, she fled—still screaming—into the gardens of the castle.


	4. Of Winter and Hunters and Little Birds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little Bird flees from the Winter Knight

Little Bird fled down gravel paths of the Royal Gardens, between rose bushes and apple trees, between beds of bright flowers and low blankets of herbs. The sun beat down, bright and warm; the air was filled with the buzz of insects. The world was at peace.

Little Bird fled down the gravels paths of the Royal Gardens and every time she looked behind her, the Winter Knight still pursued.

She had no breath for screaming, no mind for thinking, no heart for beating. Her hands still dusted with flour, the pockets of her apron filled with seeds she’d meant to sprinkle on her new loaves, her feet slipping in ill-fitting clogs Little Bird fled before the Killer of the Kingdom.

He moved with deliberation, slow and calm, and though she ran as fast as she could and he never seemed to move much faster than a plod still — she gained no distance.

Little Bird fled down the gravels paths of the Royal Gardens and with each step some how the Winter Knight grew ever closer, bringing shadows in his wake. 

And then Little Bird ran out of paths to flee down. 

Instead, she came to a wall, over grown with ivy, taller than her head, made of thick stone. Panicked, weeping, Little Bird beat at the hard stones with her delicate little hands, finally drawing breath enough to scream again.

Closer and closer drew the crunching steps of the Winter Knight, closer and closer till that was all she could hear. She turned and pressed her back to the stone for it was worse not seeing her fate. 

The armored man—it was a man inside the armor, his clear blue eyes were visible in the slit of his visor—stopped an arms length away from her. He rested in perfect stillness and silence and the air around him seemed colder and darker than the rest of the world.

Little Bird looked up into the black metal of his face mask, and saw his eyes once more and thought—under her fear—that his eyes looked so very sad. So sad that her fear left her and she stepped towards him, reaching out to touch the breastplate of his armor. 

The metal was like ice, burning cold, and the slightest glancing touch numbed her fingers to the bone. She hurled herself backwards, weeping again, sobbing with the pain in her hands.

The Winter Knight looked down on her from his armor of ice, with his sad blue eyes, and drew his sword.

Little Bird covered her face with her arms, no longer wanting to see. 

There was a noise like a thousand angry bees and then the blade of the sword struck…

…the wall next to her head, carving a great scar in the ivy and stone, sending sparks flying against the skin of her arms. Little Bird screamed and fell to her knees.

“Leave her,” snapped the Hunter’s voice from far away, crackling with rage. “She’s mine.”

 _”Sheeeeeee’ssssss dangerousssssss,”_ the Winter Knight whispered, his voice like the wind over a graveyard. _“Dannnnnggggeeeerrrrousssss to the Kkkkkkkkkkkingdom. Dangerousssss to us allllllll.”_

“Dangerous?” barked the Hunter, closer now and so Little Bird looked up to see him advancing on the great hulking form the the Winter Knight. His fearsome bow was in his hands. 

She looked down to see the Winter Knight’s sword lay on the dirt her side, the hilt pierced through with a black arrow. 

The Hunter had shot the Winter Knight’s weapon from his hand to protect her. Now he was upon her, hauling her roughly to her feet, pulling her away from the Winter Knight. “She’s scared of her own shadow—the only danger she presents is in making us all greedy for the goods she bakes. Leave her, Sirrah. She is my charge, not your prey.”

The Hunter marched Little Bird back down the paths where she had recently fled, his hand on her arm bruising, muttering unkind words about her foolish cowardice. 

But the Winter Knight did not follow them and for Little Bird that was comfort enough.


	5. Of Monsters and Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little Bird’s knives are dull and so she seeks out the Castle’s Smith

This morning at the Castle At The Centre Of The Realm once more Little Bird made bread. She made the same bread she had been making the day the Winter Knight had come to her kitchen…

…yesterday? The day before? A week or more? 

All Little Bird knew was that it was morning, and she made bread in the mornings, and the Winter Knight _with his mortal eyes full of grief and his armor of black ice_ had not returned to bother her again. But then neither had The Hunter come to sit in her kitchen and eat her biscuits and that made her sad.

Even if his words were as cold and hard as the Knight’s armor. Even if he disdained her and called her a coward. He had saved her and claimed her as his ward. And for just a moment, Little Bird had not been afraid.

On this morning, unlike other mornings, when Little Bird went to chop some herbs to sprinkle on her loaves she found her knives were dull. This was a dilemma as they had never been dull before this morning.

So, unlike every other morning, Little Bird tucked her tools into a rolled up towel and ventured out into the halls of the Castle, creeping timidly around the walls, hoping not to meet the Winter Knight or the Lady of Spiders or worse the Summer Knight with his beautiful face and cruel heart. Seeds spilled from her pockets again, as they always did, and she felt comfort to think of the little mice than might feed their young from such spoils.

Little Bird crept like a mouse herself down empty corridors that seemed as still and lifeless as a crypt. Rich tapestries and carpets adorned the walls, clean and plush but dull, without color or life. Torches flickered in brackets on the wall, and lanterns gleamed from the rafters…but the light seemed dim, barely able to penetrate the gloom on every surface.

And in all the great length of halls and expansive rooms Little Bird met not one other soul. 

The Castle At The Centre Of The Realm echoed, hollow and empty.

Eventually Little Bird found a door to the outside, to a courtyard she’d thought she’d seen when the Hunter dragged her into the Castle. It was bare but for a large trough of water and a stone structure with open walls and closed roof that housed a fire burning so hot she could feel it on her face even as she opened the door.

A forge. And if the Castle had a forge, it had a blacksmith.

Little Bird peered out into the sunshine—how was it so far over head, beating down on her for was it not early morning and so time for her to make bread?—and ventured a few steps from the door.

A shadow covered her, as though the sun had suddenly hidden her face in her hands, and Little Bird found herself looking up and up and up into the grey-green face of a troll.

It was huge, many times her height and it had great curling tusks that jutted out from its lower jaw. It wore nothing but a ragged pair of breeches and leather straps across its chest. Its thick bumpy hide was mottled with scars and burns, as though it had fought in many wars and lost them all.

The great slash of a mouth gaped open, a thick grunting noise emerging from its rubbery lips.

Little Bird shrieked, as she was wont to do, and fell onto her backside. She scrabbled away from the monster with her hands behind her, like a crab trying to escape the pot. 

A burst of heat enveloped her at the same time as a hand reached down and grabbed her hair, holding her still and stopping her scrambling flight. She turned her head and saw legs in leather breeches much like the troll’s. And felt a burning sensation on her back.

She had nearly thrown herself straight into the flames of the forge fire.

Gasping, Little Bird pushed herself to her feet, the hand in her hair releasing as she did so. She found herself looking into the eyes of a dark haired man with a neat beard, dressed all in leather with bare arms covered in healing burns. He stood and stared at her without speaking, his eyes full of mischief.

Little Bird looked from him to the troll…which had taken a seat on the stones outside the forge and was studying her as intently as the silent man. It its huge green fist it held her knives, still half-wrapped in their towel.

Despite the fear that hammered her heart, Little Bird looked closer at both the monster and the man and saw no anger or malice in either of them. She pressed her hands to her stomach nervously and nodded at them both.

“Forgive me my caterwauling. It is my nature and no harm or fault of yours, good smith and … creature. I am called Little Bird and I am the baker in the castle. I was torn from my home by the Hunter, and recently menaced by the Winter Knight and now my knives are dull and I wondered if you…could sharpen them again?” She trailed off miserably, knowing she looked and sounded the witless fool she was.

The troll grunted and reached one long heavy arm towards her, handing her back her knives in the bundle. She offered them in turn to the man. He took them wordlessly, unwrapping and setting them out against the edge of his forge. He pulled out a whetstone and grinder, setting them close to hand, then looked back at her. Silently, he gestured for her to leave and so she departed into the courtyard, edging carefully past the troll until she was in the open air again. 

Little Bird leaned against one wall of the courtyard and tried to regain her breath, calm the hammering of her heart. She dipped a hand into a pocket and holding seeds in her palm she whistled down a few of the little birds who soared and twittered above. Their bright eyes and tiny claws, the soft sweep of their feathers and the tiny pecks of their beaks soothed her soul.

So much did they calm her, those little birds for whom she was named, that she did not even start or cry out when the Hunter spoke from behind her shoulder.

“Can you not go even one day without stirring up trouble, or frightening yourself to sickness you foolish girl?” He snapped, stomping into her view. “I heard your wailing from outside the walls,”

“I think coming upon a troll unwarned and unbidden is a fair time to scream, Hunter,” Little Bird murmured. “My knives were dull and needed sharpening—and so the master smith is accommodating me.”

The Hunter glared at her but for once she was not wholly terrified of his anger, for there was knowledge she felt she needed that he might have.

“The smith?” She asked, looking into the Hunter’s eyes. “Who cut his throat? And how is he still alive?” 

For she had seen under the neat trim of his dark beard that the reason the smith was silent was not from choice—a thick jagged line marred the skin of his throat. A fearsome wound; a mortal one.

The Hunter, discomfited, looked away. “Do not anger the Summer Knight, Little Bird. His punishments for disrespect are lavish. And he seldom allows one the freedom of death.”

The Hunter sank back into the wall himself, his cold hard voice now small and soft. “There was a time the Castle had a mighty healer within it, and he and the Smith were great friends. The Smith spoke out against the Summer Knight in council and for his insolence the Summer Knight drove his blade into the Smith’s throat. The Healer succored the Smith enough to live but was not allowed to give him back his voice.”

“Where is the Healer now?”

“Gone,” the Hunter said firmly. “And if you don’t want to die with a blade in your delicate neck, Little Bird, don’t ask again.” He looked at her and seemed suddenly to see the feathered creatures flitting about her head, perching on her shoulders and feeding from her hand. “You have a way with birds? Is that how you got your name?”

“It is,” she said, smiling a little at the tiny creatures. “Birds come to me, all sizes and shapes. Owls would rest on the window sills of the bakery at night; crows would line themselves up by the door for scraps.”

The Hunter’s eyes, still cold and hard as the Winter Knight’s armor, grew thoughful.


	6. Of Hunters and Knights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Summer Knight visits Little Bird’s kitchen

That morning, like every morning in the Castle At The Center Of The Realm, Little Bird baked bread. The Hunter had returned to his stool but now he ate less and stared at her more. 

That frightened her, of course, but not more than anything else so she just kneaded her dough and chopped her herbs as always. 

Until the door to her kitchen opened and the Summer Knight stomped in, his scale mail making faint metallic noises, his shield on his arm and his sword at his side.

Little Bird shrieked and dropped the pottery jar of olive oil she was holding. The Hunter darted his hand out and caught the precious object before it could smash on the floor, gently setting it on the counter top, then turning to his master.

“Are you ready to believe me then?” He asked in a cold hard voice.

“I am ready to punish you for being a lying fool,” the Summer Knight snapped, his blue eyes glinting with cruelty.

The Hunter turned to Little Bird and gestured at the broad window to the garden. “Call the birds, little one. Like you did at the forge.”

Trembling, stumbling, tearing up, Little Bird made her way to the window and pulled out a handful of seeds from her pockets. She tried to whistle, to call her feathered friends to her hand but her mouth was as dry as her flour. Seeds spilled from her shaking hand and she began to cry in earnest.

“Hmmmmmph. I thought so,” muttered the Summer Knight and the ringing of his sword being drawn was like a razor through the thick hot air.

The Hunter stepped up and rested his hand on Little Bird’s shoulder, his voice—still hard—calm and even. “Call them, baker girl. Or it’s both our heads.”

And so Little Bird opened her mouth and managed a few gentle notes of a song, a few soft words barely audible from her squeaky terrified throat. 

_”You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”_

A twittering burst out from above the window and in a few seconds a flock of birds, little songbirds and sparrows, birds round bodied and long tailed, some larger robins and even a crow or two had descended on the kitchen window and Little Bird herself, feeding delightedly on her seeds. 

Behind her the Summer Knight paused his advance, and sheathed his sword and eventually spoke. “Can she call the Visjar to her?”

“I think so,” the Hunter said thoughtfully. “The creature is uncanny in knowing where I am and it avoids me. But if it comes to her — I can be far enough away to kill it while it rests on her arm.”

“I do not want to help you kill anything,” Little Bird burst out, turning from the window to stare at the men. “I will not!”

The Summer Knight’s hand reached out and grasped her by the throat, lifted her off her feet kicking and choking. He pulled her close to his face, his beautiful, terrible face. “You will if you want to live, baker girl.” He threw her to the ground at the Hunter’s feet and she lay on the cold stone, weeping.

Above her she heard the Summer Knight issue his orders. “You leave before the end of the day. Take the troll with you, take the Smith too. Make sure your arrows are sharp enough to slay the wind, Hunter. If you fail this time I’ll use them to blind you both.”

The Summer Knight stomped from the room, taking his cruelty and his beauty with him.

The Hunter pulled Little Bird to her feet. “Go find some leathers to wear, baker girl. I hope you know how to ride a horse.” He shoved her in the direction of her sleeping room, off the side of the kitchen. “We’ve got a bird to kill.”


	7. Of Old Wounds and New Ideas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hunter, the Smith, the Troll and the Little Bird set out on their quest to find and kill the Visjar Bird

And so Little Bird found herself on a horse the next day, flanked by the Hunter and the Smith, with the troll trailing behind, leading the pack mule.

She did not want to leave her ovens and her stores, the unchanging routine of her bread and pastries, the birds on her window sill and the cold angry man on her stool.

But she was glad to leave the Castle At The Heart Of The Kingdom behind her, its echoing empty halls lined with spider webs and men in armor who wished her dead.

Still, she did not want to kill this miraculous bird the Hunter spoke about, the Visjar. She was not sure why but it seemed especially wrong to kill a thing that was the last of its kind.

They travelled for days, in grim silence: the Hunter would not speak, the Troll and the Smith could not speak and Little Bird was too frightened to speak. 

When Little Bird slept, on the cold hard ground for the paths they rode were far from any town, she dreamed of being brave. She dreamed of being a warrior, fighting at the Hunter’s side, in the cause of some great good enterprise. 

She woke as she always had, a useless coward.

They reached in time the ring of mountains that marked the end of the Realm, the end of the world, beyond which lay only madness and death. But here, on this side, the country was warm and lush in the summer heat. 

A river appeared on their right, wide and slow and gentle. A forest sprang up on their left, cool and calm and fragrant. The Hunter brought back rabbits from the woods and Little Bird collected berries from the bushes. The Troll broke up wood for the fire and the Smith’s clever hands constructed devices that made the flames leap hotter and higher. 

Little Bird baked trail bread and made rough jam and roasted rabbits in wild herbs and felt calmer with every stride the horses made away from the Castle and the terrible Knights and their Lady of Spiders.

But the Hunter grew ever colder and angrier, barking orders and calling her names at the slightest provocation. She realized, in time, that he was indeed afraid for if he failed this mission she believed the Summer Knight would be true to his threat and put out both their eyes. 

She also thought, sometimes in the firelight before she fell asleep, that the Hunter looked very sad.

“Hunter?” She whispered one night, after a day when his impatience made her cry more than once. He had said they would be in the right land, come the morrow, and he could lay his trap for the Visjar Bird in earnest. 

“What?” He snapped. “If you’re going to tell me you’re afraid, don’t bother. I know already.”

“What would happen if you just…did not return to the Castle? If none of us did?” She sat up, turning to look at where the Smith and the Troll lurked at the other side of the fire. They both stirred, still awake. “We four could make a good life, I think. Why not just keep riding, and leave this bird you hunt in peace, and never return to the Heart of the Realm?”

The Hunter stared at her, his eyes wide even in the dim light. “You are a fool as well as a coward,” he said, and made as though to turn away, to pace in the darkness as he so often did. 

“But why?” She asked again, and it was the bravest thing she had ever done.

In a flash the Hunter had crossed the ground between them and hauled her up by her arm and his hand under her throat. He pushed her back into a tree and lifted her off her feet.

“The Falconer tried that, years ago. He was the Summer Knight’s closest friend but he cried out against him when he imprisoned the Winter Knight in that enchanted armor. The Winter Knight, his own brother! The Falconer called it evil and ran away and the Summer Knight sent the Lady of Spiders in pursuit. She dragged him back tangled in her webs. Then he had the Winter Knight sever his arm from his shoulder, and the Healer to close the wound and they made me take his severed limb and throw it in the river to be swept away. That was the quarrel that cost the Smith his voice and the Healer his mind. You cannot run from the Winter Knight, Little Bird, for he never stops. You cannot hide from the Lady of Spiders for she sees all. You cannot beg mercy from the Summer Knight for he knows none.”

The Hunter leant in, till their noses touched. She closed her eyes, trembling. “And I do not wish to be cast into the wilderness a blind and useless beggar, no matter if you are with me or not.”

He cast her aside then, and she lay in the dirt and wept.

Not for herself, though she knew he would assume it so — she wept for the pain in his voice and the horrors of his life.

And she wept for the creature they must now go to kill.


	8. Of Arrows in Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little Bird finally meets the Visjar Bird

In time the party came to a wide and peaceful valley, cut by the river and lined with trees. The road was firm and flat, the bushes laden with berries and the grass of the meadows fragrant with wild flowers and herbs. 

In their travels Little Bird thought that perhaps they were not alone in the valley, for sometimes the leaves of the trees rustled without wind and she thought she could smell smoke from a fire that was not theirs. But the Hunter never seemed to notice these oddities and so she thought it was only her ever present fear that brought such fancies to her thoughts.

She never thought to ask the Smith or the Troll what they might have heard or seen or smelled on the breeze for how could they have told her. 

Then came the day the river widened and flattened out into a great lake with a single small island with a single tall tree in the very center. It was so far away it seemed no more than a sliver, too far for even the great black bow of the Hunter to reach from the shore. 

At the top of the tall tree sat a huge nest, gleaming red and gold in the setting sunlight. 

“There,” said the Hunter with satisfaction, which was still cold and angry on him. “That is where the Visjar Bird comes to rest, when it’s not tormenting the King at the Castle. It will not fly close to shore when I am near by but the Smith here will make me a raft of branches and vines, and the Troll will gather leaves to cover me so that I seem no more than a floating log on the surface of the water. You will sit under the tree in the morning and sing your song, baker girl. When it comes to you I will rise from the raft and put an arrow through its eye and we will return triumphant to the Castle. The Summer Knight will not take my eyes, nor yours, Little Bird and the King will be pleased. We will feast and the Realm will be at peace.”

“How am I to reach the island?” Asked Little Bird, in misery. “I cannot swim and I am too afraid of falling into the water to paddle a raft there.”

The Hunter scoffed at her. “The Troll can carry you on his shoulders then — in fact, do that now, Troll. Take her and leave her there. We have work to do.”

And no matter that Little Bird wailed and wept the Troll did as he was bidden, depositing her on the small island. The big ugly creature was gentle, for such a monster, and she thought perhaps she saw pity and upset in his eyes.

But he still left her, curled up on a patch of soft moss at the base of the tree. She cried until she was sick and her eyes hurt. She bathed them in the cool water of the lake, and drank a little, and then tried to dry her wet skirts against a rock. 

On the far bank she could just barely see the Troll, the Smith and the Hunter making their devices to trap and kill this innocent bird upon who’s home she now trespassed. 

Once she thought perhaps she had seen an animal at the top of one of the trees, above where the Hunter had made their simple, concealed camp but in the end decided it was only an errant shadow.

In time she rested against the trunk of the tree and despite her fear and upset, Little Bird fell asleep as the night crept over the valley. From high above, where the nest of the Visjar bird perched, there came a flash of light with the last rays of the sun, as though something silver high in the branches had caught the light. 

Then it was dark and Little Bird slept, oddly unafraid.

She woke as the sun rose over the rim of the mountains that ringed the Realm, mellow golden light like her best honey. 

Out of the rays of the run flew a great bird, like an eagles on wide wings of ruby and gold. It spread its span to catch the breezes, only flapping once in a great while. It seemed as large as a carthorse, more beautiful than jewels, more regal than any monarch.

It circled high in the air, looking at something on the surface of the lake then banked and turned as though to fly away again.

Without thought of what she did, Little Bird jumped to her feet and cried out, not wanting this beatific creature to abandon her.

Hearing her voice the Visjar bird turned back in a single wide sweep of its wings and dove for the island, hurtling towards her up-stretched arms. 

It landed on the moss before her, tall as she, shining and beautiful. Its eyes were clever and kind, its feathers faceted like crimson jewels and its beak purest gold.

It looked at her as though it knew her and hopped closer, eye to eye.

Just over its feathered shoulder Little Bird saw the Hunter rise from his concealing leaves, on his clever raft anchored near to shore of the little island and fire one of his black arrows at the Visjar Bird’s heart.

The little baker girl, afraid of everything, coward and fool, screamed out “No!”

And threw herself between the arrow and the bird.

She felt a searing shock of pain in her breast and fell down dead at the Visjar’s feet.


	9. Of Loss and Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hunter has slain the Little Bird and only now has realized what she meant to him.

“No!” The Hunter cried out, seeing his arrow sink to the fletching in the baker girl’s breast. He could not move, in horror, to think he had slain her.

Before he could fire another arrow the Visjar snatched Little Bird up in its beak and flew away into the setting sun, towards the mountains. He flew directly over the Hunter’s up turned face and a single drop of ruby red blood struck the Hunter on the cheek. It did not fall, but stayed there even as he wiped at it, tears in his eyes.

He gestured wildly at the Troll on the lake shore to pull him in.

As he was pulled on his raft to shore he scrubbed and scrubbed at his face but the drop of blood would not be scraped from his skin. It pulsed like a heart, hot as her beautiful breads straight from the oven. 

He stumbled to the sandy bank, eyes wet with tears and heart breaking. His life was forfeit to the Summer Knight’s wrath, for he had failed in his mission. But that mattered less than thinking he would never again sit on a stool in that warm dark kitchen and watch the fearful little baker making her beautiful confections. 

A hard rough hand ripped his bow from his grasp, and he looked up to see the face of the man he thought was long dead: the dark angry visage of the Falconer. 

Then a great heavy blow struck him on the side of the head and he fell insensible to the earth.

When the Hunter awoke it was night. He lay bound hand and foot near the fire and on the other side of the flames the Falconer and the Smith silently argued.

The Troll lurked in the background, sheltering a figure that sat with its head down and the cowl of a robe pulled up to cover its face.

So, the mind-broken Healer still lived as well.

The Hunter struggled to rise, to fight against his bonds, and that attracted the attention of the one-armed Falconer who strode to him and fetched him a kick against his ribs. 

“Be still, you murderous wretch,” the Falconer snapped, a knife clutched in his remaining hand. 

“Run, you fool,” gasped the Hunter. “Do you think they are not coming, the Lady of Spiders, the Winter Knight? Leave me to their mercies, I care not, but run! Run! All of you!”

The Falconer, turning away, turned back.

“Why would you care what your masters do to us, lackey?” He snarled.

“My Little Bird is taken from me, by my own hand. What care do I have to live in this world any longer? Unbind me and leave me my bow, what arrows remain. I will make them pincushions of their own white flesh. That might slow them down in hunting you. Fly, Falconer. I accept your hatred but I was never your enemy.”

“His enemy? No, perhaps, but now you are surely a dead man, Hunter.” And the shadows in the trees behind the camp parted to reveal not simply the terrible Winter Knight in his enchanted armor, not simply the Lady of Spider in her lock-step horror but also the Summer Knight himself, beautiful as the dawn, deadly as the blade of a sword.

The Falconer slit the bonds on the Hunter’s wrist with a single slash of his knife and moved to stand next to the Smith and Troll and the mind-broken Healer. 

The Hunter scrabbled frantically at his remaining bonds as they faced each other across the flames of the campfire: the Summer Knight and his pet killers; the Falconer and his broken monsters. 

The Hunter did not care who won. His Little Bird was gone and not until he’d seen the arrow in her chest had he known what she was to him.

What did his life matter, if hers was gone?


	10. Of Quests Given

The Hunter freed himself, and snatched up his bow from where it lay next to the fire for no one else could draw it, so fearsome was the strength of its bend and the skill needed to ply it as a weapon.

The Troll lumbered forward, moving to protect the Smith who raised a blunt headed hammer and the Healer who sat still, head bowed and seemed to not even know the Knights and the Lady had accosted them. 

The Falconer strode closer a pace, to face down the Summer Knight.

They had been the greatest of friends, the dark man and the golden one, close as brothers. But the Falconer had spoken out against the King’s cruel commands and the Summer Knight had chosen his monarch over his boon companion.

The Hunter remembered that when the Winter Knight had taken the Falconer’s arm off in one blow, the Falconer had not cried out. He had simply fallen to his knees, staring into the Summer Knight’s face. 

Outnumbered nearly two to one — the Summer Knight did not seem to notice or care. Nor should he. He had at his back two creatures of nightmare and death: the Winter Knight who could not be stopped and the Lady of Spiders who never failed to trap her prey. 

And he himself was a warrior without peer, a swordsman whos blade could wound the wind.

Well, The Hunter’s arrows could split the wind in twain. They would see whos point found the mark first. 

The Summer Knight set his shield on his arm and pointed his blade at the Falconer. “I will take your other arm, cripple, and leave you here to bleed your last. Take up the Hunter’s words and flee, grant yourself a few more moments of your miserable life.”

“I am done running from you. Let this end here, now. Let your cruelty be repaid in blood.” The Falconer brandished his knife as though he expected his puny blade would be a match for the great longsword of the Summer Knight. The Troll and the Smith took his side and after a moment, the Hunter the other shoulder, arrow strung and bow drawn.

His Little Bird was taken from him, dead by his own hand. He would die here and be happy for it.

The Winter Knight drew his blade of ice and shadows. 

The Lady Of Spiders raised her claws, each tipped with blue venom that glowed in the darkness. 

A great light blossomed around them all, holding them motionless as though wrapped in chains of gold. 

With the sound of sweeping wings like music, the Visjar Bird dropped from the heavens to the ground between the two factions. It shone with ruby and gold radiance, too beautiful to gaze directly upon.

It looked each one of them in the eyes and opened its beak, letting a soft noise flood out.

And in the song of the Visjar Bird, they each heard words.

_You are not enemies. It is ill that you would do violence upon each other and so I forbid it. You have a greater task now, for the Little Bird’s life hangs by a thread and she will need each of you to save her._

“Save her!” Cried the Hunter. “My arrow pierced her heart! She is dead and beyond saving!”

“Her heart did not belong to her but to another,” whispered a new voice from the shadows beyond the fire. The Healer spoke for the first time.

_As long as the drop of her heart’s blood lies wet upon your cheek, Hunter, the Little Bird’s life may be returned to her. But you must make haste, for you have many trials and a long journey before you._

_I charge you now, friend and enemy alike: you must undertake this quest. You must gather items I will instruct you to gather and bring them to the mountain top on the far side of the lake. There I have laid the Little Bird on a bier of flowers and jewels. If you follow my words with perfect devotion, it may be that her life can be returned. But it can only be done together, as one company._

“Why should I care what happens to that foolish girl, who lead all these monsters to my hideaway?” Snapped the Falconer, angry and cold. 

_Because she is the key to freeing you all — and the King — from the evil spell that lies upon this kingdom. This land is dying, each day melding into the next without pause or marking. There are no seasons anymore, no people save only those of you here. Monsters cross the mountains and creep ever closer. The shadows grow darker with each moment and with every heart beat the drop of blood on the Hunter’s face is drying_

_You must save Little Bird or you will all die._

The great bird spread his wings and rose into the air, hovering like another sun in the sky, then took off towards the mountains on the other side of the lake. A single feather of bright ruby lay on the ground where it had stood.

The bonds that had seemed to hold them all fell away and in the same moment the Hunter, the Falconer and the two Knights all dove for the feather on the ground.

The Summer Knight was swift as the wind and snatched it triumphantly into his hand, turning to hurl the fragile gift into the still burning fire —

— when the point of a sword erupted from his shoulder, driven through his armor and his body with such force that he was raised off his feet, his face transfixed with pain and terror.

The Winter Knight pulled his blade free and caught the feather as it fell from the Summer Knight’s hand. Without speaking, he held it out balanced on his palm, offering it silently to the Falconer.

From the earth, now wet with his own red blood, the Summer Knight cried out “Why?” 

It was the Lady of Spiders who answered him. “Because...”

The Winter Knight finished her sentence: "...no creature who bakes such bread could be evil. She does not deserve to die. We are your prisoners, Falconer,” the Winter Knight whispered, sheathing his sword. “We throw ourselves on your mercies.”

“I lost my mercy when I lost my arm,” snapped the Falconer and placed hi knife against the Summer Knight’s throat.


	11. Of Armor and Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first step of the quest is an impossible task

The Hunter flew across the space between them and snatched the Falconer’s hand from the Summer Knight’s throat. 

“The Visjar said all would be needed to save my Little Bird,” he hissed. “You can’t kill him!”

“Why should I care about her life? He destroyed mine,” the Falconer returned.

“I don’t care if you kill him! Just let me rescue her first!” The Hunter shouted. 

The Falconer regarded the Hunter with unfriendly eyes but nodded. “I can agree to that. Her life for his.”

From the blood stained earth the Summer Knight was trying to rise, his face alive with pain and rage. The Lady of Spiders appeared behind him and threw her webs about his wrists, binding his hands. 

Then another figure drifted up to them. It was a slight, small man in a stained pale robe with the hood drawn up over his eyes. He reached out one hand and laid it against the Summer Knight’s still bleeding wound. The long rent in his flesh closed, leaving only the blood still on his skin and armor to show it had ever been there. 

“How are you alive?” Snarled the Summer Knight to the Healer.

“I found him. I cared for him. If you hated him, then he was my friend,” the Falconer spat. 

The Winter Knight moved forward again, the bright ruby feather still clutched in his mailed fist. The Hunter snatched it, examining it carefully for some clue, some order, some direction. 

Nothing. It was no more than a beautiful feather of shining faceted crimson and gold. The Hunter cursed and threw the feather to the ground. 

The Falconer bent down and scooped it up.

It burst into flames in his hand.

He cursed and tossed it away — and the burning feather rose higher into the air. It danced and tossed as it burned and in a moment they could all see that it was writing words in the air with its own flames. 

_Once again spread your wings and search for the horizon_

The Hunter repeated the words out loud, shaking his head. Then he chanced to look upon the Falconer’s face and saw that he knew what the words meant. Mindful of the swiftly drying spot of blood on his cheek, the Hunter demanded he be told the meaning of the riddle.

“That creature taunts me,” the Falconer said with loathing. “How can I spread my wings again when I have only one arm?”

For that had been the Falconer’s power and pleasure and pride, that he could transform himself into the image of one of his own raptors and soar with them. That was why the Summer Knight had taken his arm. To rob him of his wings, and the sky.

The Smith waved his hand at them, gesturing wildly. Seeing they did not know what he was attempting to say he tried again, more simply. He touched the Summer Knight’s armor, then his own chest and the spread his arms wide.

“No,” breathed the Falconer. “It cannot be possible. It would be too heavy, too cumbersome.”

Then the Hunter understood. “You can forge him a new wing of metal?”

The Smith nodded vigorously. 

The Hunter turned to the Falconer. “Let him try. This is a day of miracles: the Winter has turned against Summer, the Lady of Spiders aids life and not death. The Healer cures the one who broke his mind and you chose salvation over revenge. Let him try, for my Little Bird’s life.”

When the Falconer nodded, the Hunter turned to the Winter Knight. “You are stronger and more relentless than all of us. We will need a great quantity of wood, to build the Smith a fire. Will you help?’

In response the Winter Knight merely turned and entered the forest, returning moments later with a huge old log under one arm. He dumped it in front of them and went back in. 

The Lady of Spiders bound the Summer Knight even more tightly in her webs, while he sat fuming and silent on the ground. The Healer sat down next to him, humming tunelessly. The rest of them, the Troll and the Smith, the Falconer and the Hunter set about the hard strange work of trying to construct some semblance of a forge.

The Hunter touched the spot of blood on his cheek as he worked, grateful to find it still sticky and wet. But it seemed to him that it grew a little smaller and drier with each beat of his heart.

He swallowed his fear and got about his work.


	12. Of Wings and Wonders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Smith works his magic

When the forge was ready and the fire stoked they stripped the Summer Knight of his shield, for it was made of a wondrous metal both light and strong. The Smith beat and pounded the round device into a lump and set it upon the flames, till it grew soft enough for him to work upon it.

All through the night the Smith shaped and hammered, doused and fired. The Troll kept the forge well stoked, the Healer sat gazing vacantly into the flames and the Hunter sat well back away from the heat, afraid it might dry the spot of blood on his cheek even faster.

On the other side of the forge the Summer Knight sat on the hard ground, his beautiful, terrible countenance set into an expression of rage and hatred. The Lady of Spiders hovered over him, keeping his bonds tight; the Winter Knight watched them both.

“She was his lover,” said the Falconer from the darkness behind the Hunter. “His lover before the Summer Knight grew jealous and had her heart replaced with clockwork, her blood with webs. He hated that the Winter Knight loved her.”

“I had always wondered why he locked him inside that armor; I was away hunting the Visjar when it all happened,” the Hunter said. He turned and looked at the Falconer, who had once been his own boon companion on those hunts. “I wish I had been away when he took your arm, for then I would not feel the burden of complying with his evil request.”

“Do not ask me to forgive you, Hunter,” the Falconer snapped.

“I ask nothing of you but this here, this one chance to save my Little Bird. Once I have her back I will take her far from the Castle and bother none of you so much as an hour more.”

The Falconer walked away from him then, his silence thoughtful under the anger.

The Hunter looked back at the forge and wondered _had they really brought all that equipment with them?_

*****

As the rays of the sun crested the mountains that ringed the Kingdom, the Smith stepped back from his forge with a flare of metal clutched in two sets of tongs. It glowed red even as the sky brightened. He walked over to the banks of the lake and quickly plunged the heated metal into the clear water.

A great cloud of steam arose, obscuring him from view.

He emerged from the mist holding the metal object in his hands, a triumphant smile pulling at the scars on his throat. He spread the fan of metal wide and it was clearly and radiantly a wing, each feather delicately forged and etched.

The Falconer approached him, his remaining hand reaching out to touch the metal, caress its smoothness. He nodded, his anger leaving him for the first time.

He took the metal into his hand, held it up to his maimed shoulder and breathed out.

Feathers sprouted along his limbs, from his neck, his face. His eyes turned from human to the staring gold of a hunting bird. As the change moved over him his body and clothes seemed to melt and run, flowing over the metal of the wing end like candle wax. 

Then the Falconer was gone and a great rust-brown falcon stood in his place— with two wings. One of flesh; one of steel.

He raised them with a great piercing cry and swept into the air, with a wind so powerful it buffeted the Healer off his feet, to be caught by the Troll.

The Falconer took to the skies once more, crying out his triumph and joy. Then he landed again, ruffling his feathers. 

“What do we do now?” Said the Winter Knight in his voice of ash and shadows.

The Hunter pointed to where the Visjar bird had disappeared, on the other side of the lake. “Search that way and return, advising what you have seen. Find the Little Bird where she lies, my once friend. We will track around the edge of the lake, that way.” He pointed in the direction opposite from the road. 

“You’ll die,” hissed the Summer Knight, his teeth grinding. “If the monsters in the mountains don’t take you, I’ll kill you all myself. Traitors. The King should never have let you live.”

“King,” said the Lady of Spiders, tilting her head like doll. “Seen?”

Somehow her single word struck them all like the Hunter’s arrows. Eyes met—even the vacant gaze of the Healer and the inhuman stare of the Falconer; even the Summer Knight looked upon each of those who had been his servants and warriors. 

In that moment they all realized at once that none of them had ever laid eyes on the King of the Castle at the Heart of the Realm.


	13. Of Forests and Freedoms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The heros on their quest must show their true faces or they have come to the end of their journey.

The odd little band of once friends and mortal enemies had trailed around the edge of the lake for a day and night. At sunrise and sunset they saw the Visjar bird circle above them and then glide out into the middle of the lake, to its nest once again. 

After only a few hours on the first day they found a wide, even path through the trees, flat as any road. The trees on either side hung with apples and good sweet berries; a clear stream of water danced beside them day and night. 

The Hunter had been worried that the bounty was some sort of trick or trap but the tunelessly humming Healer had drunk the water before anyone could stop him — to wash down the handful of berries he had plucked — and he did not die or become ill. So those of the party who needed to eat food were well cared for.

The Hunter thought, from time to time, that they had brought supplies with them, had they not? Horses, food, skins of water and wine? And yet none had more than the clothes on their backs, their personal weapons…and a growing unease about the very fabric of their universe.

The Summer Knight had fallen into an angry, worried silence since the Lady of Spiders had spoken her devastating words. He was chivvied along their path by the Troll and the Winter Knight, hands still bound. 

Four times the Falconer had returned, taken human form briefly to advise them that the road seemed to lead to a great cleft in the mountains that none had noticed before. Nestled in that cleft, up a long and steep trail, was another lake and another island.

This island had no nest though, no great tree. Instead, on a bed of flowers and fruit, wheat and corn, surrounded by an honor guard of bees and butterflies lay Little Bird. The Falconer could not take human form on that island, no matter how hard he tried.

The Hunter’s hand strayed ever and ever to the drop of blood still wet on his cheek, feeling it grow smaller and smaller. He would have run ahead, sprinted like a some wild creature gone mad but every time he went out of sight and hearing of the rest of the trees closed in on the path ahead. So he paced and muttered and strove to drive them all faster. 

In time he found himself walking next to the Lady of Spiders, where she trailed at the end of the line. He knew her, somehow. He felt it now, the further and further they travelled from the Castle At The Heart of The Kingdom. He knew her colors were red and black. He knew her smile, rare and fleeting as a winter’s sunny day. 

How could he know her smile, when she had no face?

“Have you never truly seen the King?” He asked in the evening of the second day of their travels. In his heart the Hunter was becoming afraid. Two days had passed and they should have been nearly to the mountains feet. But the Falcon said they were still barely half-way there.

The Lady of Spiders, still tick-tocking forward in her lockstep way flicked her chin side to side. “Never.”

Suddenly the Smith, roving out in front of the band pulled up, waving his hands in the dying light, peering around a corner.

When they all reached him they saw that the forest had grown over the path, dense as a wall of bricks. 

“What now?” Whispered the Winter Knight in his voice of blood and death.

“We go back I suppose, find another path,” said the Hunter, tightly controlling his panic.

But when they turned, the forest behind them was the same as before, and the sides as well. They were trapped on a few bare feet of clear ground.

The Falconer appeared above, landing softly.

“The road continues past here, and somehow…the mountains are just on the other side?” He sounded confused, frightened. “You have to get through the trees. I’ll scout from the other side.”

And he raised his arms to turn them into wings…

Nothing happened. No matter how he strove and struggled, he was land-bound once more.

They stood in the growing darkness, staring in fear and horror at the trees surrounding them, growing ever blacker, ever closer.

The sound of wings made of fire and light swept over them—the Visjar appeared, bathing their little patch of ground in crimson and gold.

_This is the Forest of Truth. Show the trees your true face, your true heart, and they will let you pass. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Little Bird’s life fails, hanging by the slightest of threads. Before this night is done you must save her or she is lost forever_

Glowing like the sun, the Visjar stretched its neck to the stars and flew away straight up into the sky.

“True face? True Heart? One, both? Oh, how I hate riddles,” the Hunter cried, despair flying from him as he felt the little dot of blood shrink further, grow drier. 

“Me first,” said the Lady of Spiders.

Two. She of the clockwork heart, who could speak but a single word, spoke two. She of the bloodless webs, who could move only in straight lines, turned gracefully on her toes and swept towards the stand of trees that blocked their path. She reached up her black gloved hands and extended her claws, her poisoned weapons. She raked at the smooth red metal of her face plate, rending and tearing at it, sparks flying and setting fire to the dry dead leaves at her feet. They could see glowing blue liquid, like sapphire blood, spray and drip down her arms.

As the wreath of smoked concealed her from view, the Lady of Spiders tore off her armor — her armor that kept her alive. In the writhing smoke and leaping fire, she began to scream with pain. 

But her hands never stopped tearing at her face, her head covering. 

The Winter Knight dropped the Summer Knight’s arm and stalked forward, his slow plodding pace quickened and frantic.

“Noooo,” he whispered and his corpse’s voice became that of a man.

With a popping noise, the bolts that fixed his helmet of ice and metal to the bones of his neck and shoulders worked themselves free, falling to clink on the ground. He reached up and ripped the helmet off, his own red blood pouring out to pool and mix with the Lady of Spider’s venom. Where it ran, the fire went out. Where they both touched him, the frozen armor warmed and slumped, like an ice sculpture in the mid-day sun.

Lumbering into the flames and smoke, the Winter Knight snatched the slim form of the Lady into his arms and let his blood run down her body from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes.

Washed in the Winter Knight’s heartsblood, the Lady of Spiders raised her face to the rest of them.

It was human, that face, delicately boned, slim and pale and beautiful beyond measures. Her face was the face of a young maiden, fresh in the first blush of her youth, sweet and open. Her eyes, though, they were the eyes of a warrior who had seen and done many terrible things.

A long braid of hair cascaded down her back, against her black cloak and dark leathers: red, red as the blood of the Winter Knight that had quenched her flames and nullified her poison. 

Somehow, she was not wet, nor stained his blood, though it still ran red from the wounds on his neck, his shoulders. He smiled down at the small form of the Lady of Spiders, then released her to stagger and fall to his knees. 

The face he turned to the group was a man’s, square and strong, high cheekbones and full lips. His close cropped hair was dark and his eyes as cold as the Winter of his name. He was pale, and growing paler.

The Healer drifted forward, raising his long fingered hands to the Knight’s throat. Softly, he murmured small nonsense words and the blood slowed, dripped, stopped. 

“Help me,” gasped the Winter Knight, pulling at his suit of plate. The Smith and the Troll leapt forward, helping him tear and pry the enchanted armor from his body. At each join, bolts and screws were heaved from his flesh, and more blood poured out. The Healer muttered his words and healed the wounds but slower and slower. By the time the last scrap of freezing metal was discarded on the ground the Healer was barely able to stand and the Winter Knight was on all fours, weak and retching in pain.

“I…helped,” whispered the Healer, sensible words for the second time since his mind was broken. 

“You did that to your own brother?” Snarled the Falconer to the Summer Knight.

The big golden man stood staring at his former killers as they ripped their humanity free of the magic he had used to enslave them. 

“I…I did,” he whispered, his strong voice soft and slow and small.

“Give me one reason not to kill you where you stand, you monster?” Yelled the Falconer, brandishing his hands as talons grew from his fingers, sharp enough to wound the wind.

“I can’t,” the Summer Knight responded. “You should kill me; I deserve it. But you should do it after we have rescued the little baker girl. We shouldn’t trade lives.”

The Troll standing ready to intervene, to snatch the Falconer back from the Summer Knight’s throat, stepped forward and placed his huge hand on the Knight’s shoulder. He looked the smaller man in the face, then turned to the Falconer and nodded.

“Life,” he said in his grumbling voice. “Life, first.”

No one had ever heard him speak a human word before.

The Falconer, quick to anger, snarled once more…then settled back on his heels and nodded.

“Right. You’re both right. No trading her life for yours. After though?” He stepped back, nodding. 

The Hunter moved forward, joined by the Lady of Spiders and the Smith pulled the Healer and the Winter Knight with him. They all made a ring in the center of the space, in the drifting smoke, under the smell of blood and heated metal.

The Summer Knight held out his bound hands. “You have no reason to trust me. But I pledge myself to this quest, to the Little Bird’s life. When she is safe, you can take your turns with me. I’ve earned your hatreds a thousand times over. But let me complete this one last duty. Let me help you save her.”

The Smith moved to stand close to him, looking into his eyes for a long time. Then, before anyone could stop him, he fetched out a knife and severed the webs that bound his wrists. 

The Hunter nodded in satisfaction.

“All that matters to me is her life. Together then, as the Visjar said. All of us, together,” he declared.

They turned as one to the wall of trees blocking their path…and as though drawing back a curtain from a window, the trunks and branches flowed to each side.

Before their little band rose the foot of the mountain and in its side was a steep rocky path, stairs and switchbacks carved into the skin of the world. At the top, they could all make out a gap in the range and a faint golden glow therein.

The Falconer raised his arms, his arms became wings and he rose into the air with a piercing cry.

The rest of them set themselves into a line, the newly human Lady of Spiders supporting the newly freed Winter Knight, the Troll gently aiding the Healer and stepped clear of the forest.

They began their trek upwards, towards the light.


	14. Of Mists and Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The questing heros move closer to their goal.

They walked up the stairs in a strung out line, the Troll leading the way. 

The Hunter walked next to the Lady of Spiders, glancing at her newly human form in fascination. She was delicate and beautiful like porcelain but her could still feel the anger and pain boiling off of her, like the smoke from earlier.

“Did we know each other?” The Hunter asked her, curiously.

“When?” She shook her head violently. “When did you mean?” Even now speaking more than one word seemed to pain her a little.

“Before…this I guess,” The hunter turned and gestured at the Kingdom, spread out before them—

It was gone.

A swirling wall of mist, flashed with rainbow colors, advanced slowly towards them. Already it had swallowed the road from the Castle, and lapped at the island holding the Visjar’s nest.

“It’s true then,” whispered the Winter Knight, his skin pale as death. He could walk on his own now, slow and halting. His left arm seemed to hang heavy and immobile still. “The Realm is dissolving.”

“How is this possible?’ Said the Summer Knight from where he trudged at the back of the pack, miserable, alone. “The Castle has stood at the Heart of the Realm for all time.”

“For all the time we remember,” whispered the Healer. 

The Falconer landed in his bird form on the stairs above and turned into a man, hopping impatiently from foot to foot. “The air is growing thick and so cold even I will not be able to fly much longer. There are things in the fog, voices and faces, monstrous.”

The Smith gestured a question. 

The Falconer shook his head. “I don’t know, you should have been there by now. And yet you seem no closer.” As they stood in a knot, the Summer Knight edged past them, not really looking at any of them, and took the lead up the stairs.

There was a soft rumble from the ground itself and though he had just glanced up the mountain and seen nothing but more steps now when the Hunter looked a break in the path stretched out a few dozen stairs past the Summer Knight. 

Somewhere past the edge of what he could see a soft pearlescence glowed.

He touched the drop of blood on his cheek, small, so small, but still tacky, still wet. Crying out, The Hunter charged up the stairs, past the Summer Knight.

The glow was cut off as though a portcullis had snapped down and now ahead of him he saw only stairs again. 

He turned and looked at the Summer Knight, who was eyeing the path with intense interest. He drew even with the Hunter, then passed him again…

…and now the glow was back, the stairs ended, the break in the mountains appeared again.

“You have to lead us,” the Hunter said to the Summer Knight, who nodded.

“Please, may I have my sword back?” He asked the Troll who shook his massive ugly head. Instead he proffered the Summer Knight’s round shield. The other man took it, with a small grateful ‘thank you’. He set it on his left arm and stood taller, prouder.

Lead by the Summer Knight, the questing heros made their way into the narrow pass cut through the mountains at the edge of the World. The rock walls were rough and close and the Troll could barely fit through them. The Falconer walked at the end, as far away from the Knights as possible. 

At the front, with each step the Summer Knight seemed to take on something like a golden sheen, an aura. In his shadow the Winter Knight walked more freely, more strongly. The Lady of Spiders moved with agile grace. The Hunter felt he could see forever. The Healer could be heard murmuring to himself, real words, sensible words.

The Troll and the Smith were both smiling.

The pass opened, widened and before them was spread a great valley, a gently upwards sloped field of grass and flowers, dotted with clumps of pine trees. The air was warm and soft, and scents of honey and baking bread drifted on gentle breezes. 

Everything was illuminated by the pearly glow from the lake at the head of the valley — no from the stone bier that rested on an island in the center of that lake. 

Even from where he was, the Hunter could see the still form of Little Bird lying atop the stone, hand crossed on her chest. 

The glow seemed to come from all around her, bright as a summer afternoon.

“Assemble behind me,” said the Summer Knight firmly.

With his golden figure at the tip of their arrowhead formation, the questing heros advanced towards their goal.


	15. Of Blood and Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The heros reach Little Bird — but are they too late to stop the end of the world?

The heros advanced across the field that stretched before them, seemingly as endless as the stairs had been.

The Archer, frantic now to feel how diminished the spot of heartsblood on his cheek had become, paced behind the Summer’s Knight’s heels. He dared not surge ahead for fear the island holding Little Bird’s body would vanish into mist and she be lost to him forever.

As they walked, each of the party sensed something different in the field they traversed.

To the Lady of Spiders the ground under her feet felt firm and strong, able to bear the weight of the world, when for so long it seemed she had walked on slippery webs and clicking gears.

To the Winter Knight the air he breathed—free of metal for the first time since he could remember—was fresh and bracing, each lungful reminding him he was a man and not a thing of shadows and death.

To the Troll the breeze on his face brought the scent of mead and ale, wine and roasting meats, the signs of hearth, home and the companionship of warriors.

To the Smith the mellow golden light on his skin made the ever present pain in his throat ease and fade a little. 

To the Healer, who stooped to pick a flower and chew on the stem to extract the sweet nectar, words bright and sharp and clever sprung into his mind for the first time in ages.

To the Falconer each motion in a body no longer unbalanced by the loss of his arm made his heart soar as though it had wings of its own.

To the Summer Knight the star he saw shining high and bright in the sky above Little Bird’s bier filled him with hope and a sense that he could see justice done for the first time in his life.

The Archer’s every sense was straining towards Little Bird and he could know nothing but the tightening twitch on his skin of a drop of blood drying just a little more. 

They were halfway towards the lake and the dead woman but now with each step, three foot lengths of ground opened up ahead of them. 

The Summer Knight stopped suddenly, his gaze still upturned to that star shining above. “Does the star there — does it seem dimmer?”

The Lady of Spiders nodded and spoke, soft and low. “It fades. As does the Little Bird’s light.”

“The drop of blood on my cheek is nearly gone!” Cried the Archer. “We cannot tarry!”

Grimly, the Summer Knight nodded. “Run now, all of you. Run. We need to run faster than the ground can move to thwart us.”

They sprinted as one across the field, the earth suddenly churning and quaking as though being mixed in a bowl with some great invisible spoon. The Healer stumbled and fell; the Troll snatched him and the Smith up, his great strong legs pumping at twice their speed. The Lady of Spider hooked her arms around both the Archer and the Winter Knight and they found they could all run a little faster.

The Falconer and the Summer Knight hurled themselves forward, together, running side by side like the brothers they had been. They seemed to egg each other on, moving like the wind, in perfect unison. 

The unruly ground stilled and settled before them. 

Gasping, stumbling, coughing they all fetched up onto the shore of the lake.

Little Bird seemed close enough to touch and heedless the Archer leapt forward to dive into the water. In the last instant before he touched the liquid, the Summer Knight and the Falconer snatched him back.

A coruscating shimmer of power arced across the silver surface of the water. The Summer Knight leaned down and touched the tip of his shield to the crackling field — then yelled and dropped it into the water.

His shield sank to the bottom of the still crystal liquid and as they watched seemed to crumpled and melt into a lump.

“No,” sobbed the Archer. “Please no!”

The Lady of Spiders held his hand, half to restrain him and half to give him what comfort she could. They could all see the spot of blood on his cheek was nearly gone.

The Smith, from where he stood on the Troll’s shoulder, suddenly slapped him on the top of the head and pointed excitedly to something on the island none of the rest of them could see.

And so the Troll placed the Healer on the ground and lumbered forward to splash into water.

As one all the rest of the party screamed out in denial.

The power swirled up around him, crackling and burning, sending tendrils of smoke and flashes of light from his skin. The Troll cried out in pain but held himself tall and strong, keeping the Smith still on his shoulder out of the burning lightening flaring on top of the water.

The Troll marched across the floor of the lake, the water reaching almost to his chin, grunting and crying in agony. But still he marched and still he held the Smith above him, dry and safe. As they reached the lake the Smith leapt off and ran to the right, away from the bier that held Little Bird’s body. The Troll, smoking and blackened, heaved himself on the sand and lay groaning there.

A noise like the clanking of the Lady of Spiders gears sounded and from behind the high rocks on the beach a tall strip of metal and wood rose up, extended across the lake and came to rest against another pile of rocks on the shore where the rest of the group stood. The Smith popped up and waved frantically at them.

A bridge, thin and precarious, but a bridge none of the less.

In a flash the Hunter sprinted across the treacherous length, hurtling up the beach to Little Bird’s side.

The others followed him without thought, the Summer Knight — still wincing and clutching his singed hand — last.

The Winter Knight and the Healer helped the Troll to his feet and they all trekked up the hill to the stone bier and the still form of Little Bird.

At her side stood the Archer, caressing her hair and face and weeping as though his soul was breaking.

“It’s gone. The spot. It’s dry and gone and she’s cold, still. She’s lost to me, my Little Bird and now I’m glad the world is ending for I will not have to live without her!” He wailed, his agonized cries echoing off the rocks around them.

The very air turned to crystal and fire. The star burning above them — the only one left in the sky — flickered and sputtered, dying. The light emanating from the bier began to fade. At the edge of the valley, the mists that ate their world billowed and surged forward to the very edge of the water, whipping out trails like grasping hands.

The Falconer raised his arms as though if he must die he would do it in the air. The Troll rose to his feet and placed his hand on the Smith’s shoulder in silent support. The Winter Knight and the Lady of Spiders held each other, foreheads touching in gentle communion. 

The Summer Knight firmly placed his body between all of them and the end of the world, his face set and cold and defiant. 

“No,” said the Healer, limping forward. “Two hearts are one. Hearts-blood to hearts-blood. Give me a dagger, someone.”

The Winter Knight handed over his blade, slim and beautiful and sharp as grief. 

The Archer ripped open his shirt and exposed his breast without hesitating. 

In a single swift motion the Healer plunged the blade into the Archer’s heart. 

The Archer screamed in pain but when the blade pulled free it was not with a deadly gush of crimson but a single ruby red drop of blood.

The single remaining star shone again, bright and strong and somehow closer than before.

Gently as a falling petal, the Healer laid the drop onto Little Bird’s lips and the Archer bent down to chase the sweet iron liquid with a kiss.

High above the Visjar bird burst out of nothing to flare like the sun, a triumphant scream shaking the foundation of the world.

And Little Bird sat up, looking around at all of them with a confused and wondering expression.

“What the actual fuck are you all wearing?’ She said.

Then the Visjar bird became the star, or the star had always been the bird or both the star and the flames fell upon them all…

And the world ended.


	16. Of Fantasy and Tragedy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to reality ...

The Summer Knight fell into the swirling chaos of flames and starlight and …became Steve Rogers, Captain America again.

Just in time for his own shield, apparently returning on a planned rebound throw, to hit him in the chest, knocking him flying across the big central room this particular doomsday cult had hacked out of the side of a mountain. 

He lay for a stunned moment on the ground looking up at the dark vault many stories overhead. There was a better than even chance he’d just broken his own collar bone. 

“Ow,” he said out loud and heard the same word from another man’s voice to his right. He levered himself up to meet Hawkeye’s eyes as the archer was also painfully getting to his knees.

“I was just up there,” Hawkeye said in a vague, plaintive tone, gesturing at a ledge about twenty feet up from the central space. “Why am I down here?”

“Not sure,” Captain America said, popping to his feet and reaching out his hand to the other man. There was a flash of pain from his bruised chest but he ignored it. Anything broken would start knitting soon and he’d endured worse…defending the Realm?

The two blonds stared at each other a moment. 

“Were you just in a fairy tale?” Hawkeye asked abruptly.

“Yes!” Captain America replied with deep relief. “So, not just me then?”

“All of us, I think,” Hawkeye said, looking over his shoulder. 

About that point Captain America registered how quiet everything suddenly was. No Hulk roaring, no crackle of the Widow’s Sting. No precise measured gunfire from the Winter Soldier or Falcon. No repulser fire. No lightening. 

Whatever had happened, it had knocked all the Avengers for a loop. Thor, Iron Man and Falcon were all on the rocky ground, each looking like they’d fallen there. One of Falcon’s wings was visibly broken, hanging askew. 

The Winter Soldier was … on fire. Well, his cybernetic arm was—as they watched a staggering Black Widow doused it with liquid and it went out. It looked like he’d fallen arm first into the trough of burning oil the cult had set up as a barrier. 

At the far end of the room, where the leader of this little cult had set up her “throne” a human, shirtless Bruce Banner was supporting Mockingbird, who lolled against him like a broken doll, a chunk of metal in her hand and—

“Hawkeye?”

“Yeah?”

“Is that an arrow in Mockingbird’s neck?”

The archer squinted. “It’s in her chest plate. One of my taser arrows. Didn’t penetrate much though, probably just into the bone.”

“Any idea why you shot your wife with a taser arrow?”

“Nope.” The archer limped away from him, headed towards the throne. 

Captain America vaulted onto a nearby boulder and surveyed the situation. The only things moving in the room were the Avengers at least. All of the cultists were down, at least unconscious, maybe dead, he couldn’t tell.

He hopped down, wincing where no one could see, and joined Hawkeye on his walk.

Along the way the collected a confused Thor, a distraught Falcon, a mumbling Iron Man, a smoking Winter Soldier and a bewildered Black Widow.

“What was that about, Cap?” Falcon snapped as the super soldier bent to retrieve his shield halfway across the cavern. “Why’d you smash my wing?”

“I…I smashed your wing?”

“Yeah, right when Mockingbird yelled whatever it was she yelled—”

“She yelled, ‘The kid, it’s the kid’,” Iron Man supplied.

“Well, when she yelled that you threw the damn shield at me and then…” Falcon trailed off. 

“And then you were a one armed shapeshifting Falconer in some fairy tale kingdom?” Captain America prompted him. 

“Yeah.”

“Verily, somehow between besting one of these villains and turning to the next I suddenly had the form of a troll,” Thor rumbled. 

“You cut my throat,” Iron Man said to Captain America.

“And locked me into enchanted armor,” the Winter Soldier added.

“I was made of clockwork, wasn’t I? Like really committed steampunk cosplay?” Asked Black Widow. 

They had reach the ‘throne’ area now. Bruce had one hand over his face, his lips moving silently. Mockingbird, sitting on the edge of the grotesquely stained stone altar with that taser arrow still sitting proud from her chest, looked up with a rueful expression.

“That’s all on me, guys. Apparently I _really really_ wanted to be rescued like a princess.”

*****

The leader of the cult was dead, slumped in her chair, eyes wide and terrified, her silver crown drooping over her eyes. She had controlled her followers (thankfully only unconscious) through a mix of drugs, brainwashing, violence and something even worse.

Once Hawkeye had snapped the arrow shaft off close to Mockingbird’s skin (the barbed head of the spent taser arrow was firmly latched into bone and would need surgery to be removed) she showed them the other tool in the cult leader’s arsenal.

Chained to the back of the huge ornate throne, in a shadowed cubby hole only visible from a single angle, sat a small child. He was painfully thin, with thick scars on his wrists and ankles where the chains had rubbed him. He might have been anywhere from eight to fifteen but was so small he looked like little more than a toddler, curled up against the thick stone.

His eyes were wide open and his pupils reacted to light but he did not speak or move, not even when Cap broke his chains and pulled him free.

They laid him on the altar and Mockingbird and Dr Banner examined him. Mockingbird explained as they did.

“He was wearing this,” she said, dropping a twisted lattice of metal on the table top next to his feet. “If you look there’s a transmitter on it and receiver on the one the woman is wearing. Kid’s some sort of telepath, and I think she was a sensitive too. In fact, I think she was his mother…or blood family anyway, these things run in gene lines. She was using him like an amplifier or a power source. That’s why she ran for the throne, she was going to…whammy us somehow. Maybe kill us, maybe control us.”

“How’d you know that?” The Winter Soldier asked, as he worked the joints of his arm to make sure the hydraulics weren’t damaged. 

Mockingbird started to shrug and then got an appalled expression on her face. They all waited as she bit down the yelp of pain from the arrow head still embedded in her flesh. “Psylocke said I have a tiny touch of psionics. Apparently just enough that I could sense was she was about to do — I don’t think her control was great she was probably ‘bleeding’ info out on all wavelengths.” 

Gently Mockingbird brushed the stringy hair off the boy’s forehead. “I don’t know why deked around her but I went straight for back of the throne and saw the kid and just snatched the crown off his head. That might’ve…that might be why he’s like this. Breaking the circuit so abruptly might have…shorted them both out. Killed her.”

“Why not him?” Said Black Widow.

“I was…psychically in the way. I think.” She looked around at them all with a lost expression. “I’m guessing here but … her ‘kill them’ order passed through me on its way to the kid and he tried to obey. But I’d broken the loop enough that the feedback meant instead of killing us all—”

“It hurled us into that fairy tale realm,” finished Falcon. “Your brain must have constructed that narrative to protect us all.”

“But we were in their for years?” Said Hawkeye.

“Thought is faster than light. From the time stamps on my losing and regaining power, we were all inside Mock’s fantasy for about fifteen seconds.”

“You going to tell them? Or do I get too?” Bruce asked Mockingbird drily. She glared at him.

“Tell us what? What _else_ happened?” Asked Cap.

“When she grabbed the crown, the kid stopped her heart. That’s why the Realm was dissolving. She was dying.”

“How are you alive, Lady Barton?”

Mockingbird sighed and gestured at the taser arrow. “Clint shot me. Jarvis—”

“Jarvis!” Iron Man yelled. “Jar. Vis. The Visjar bird!”

“Yeah, Jar Vis had a line into the fantasy through the three HUD’s, all our earpieces and the haptics in your suit. He couldn’t really do anything but basically ‘whisper’ instructions — that my brain processed as riddles — and apparently somehow influence Hawkeye to shoot a taser charge into my suit. He COULD use the energy burst to hit my suit defib, which did restart my heart.”

“Then why was the Realm still dissolving?” Cap asked.

Mockingbird almost started to shrug again. “I…I think that was the remnants of the ‘kill order’ trying to take over. If you all hadn’t played ‘rescue the the princess’, reminded me why I needed to live… I think it would have transmitted out from me to all of you. We’d all be dead.” She looked at Hawkeye fondly. “You saved the whole team with a kiss, sport.”

They all glanced around at each other, slightly chilled by how close a call they had just had and how little any of them could have done about it. 

“That’s well and good, “ Captain America eventually said, “but—” He stopped himself, a strange pinched expression on his face. 

“But what?” Black Widow asked.

“WHY WAS I THE BAD GUY?” He burst out suddenly, Steve Rogers flaring out from under Captain America in a rare display of emotion when in the suit. 

There was another pause and grins slowly formed on ever other face on the team. 

“Aw, poor guy, he didn’t get to be the knight in shining armor for once,” Bucky drawled, draping his flesh arm over Nat’s shoulders. 

“Not sure how he survived that,” Falcon said.

Steve glared around at his team, seething over their amusement.

Bobbi took pity on him. “Steve, the cult queen over there wanted us dead. The kid was trying to execute that order, even when my fantasy highjacked him. What I saw — from Little Bird’s eyes — was that each of us was stripped of the thing that we think is most important about us. I became a coward. Clint lost his humor. Natasha was robbed of her flexibility; Bucky his humanity. Sam lost his wings. Bruce’s brain was stolen from him.” She touched his shoulder. “They took your kindness, your mercy from you. And still, in the end, the Summer Knight put himself between all of us and the end of the world. Even as the ‘bad guy’ you were still our shield.” She looked at Tony and Thor. “The two of you though. Take away the most important thing about each of us and you wind up…not being able to talk and ‘kinda ugly’. Guys, come ON, shallow much?”

Thor stretched his armor upward, emphasizing his magnificent physique. “To be fair, Lady Barton, I am very vain.” 

 

*****

EPILOGUE

Two days later the Avengers were out on the pool deck of the Tower at the long warm summer afternoon stretched into a mellow evening. Thor, Sam, Clint, Nat, Bucky and Tony were playing a modified version of water polo that mostly involved yelling insults and splashing water in each other’s faces. 

Bobbi, keeping the bandage on her chest dry, was playing chess under the marquee with Steve. Bruce was watching both games, grinning at the pool play and critiquing the chess moves. 

She looked up from her phone between moves. “The kid’s safely on Muir Island, Storm advises. If anyone can help him it’s Dr. MacTaggert.”

“No ID yet?” Steve asked, toying with his remaining knight and then putting it down again. 

“No, not on him or the mother. No missing persons reports anywhere that match them and he’s still catatonic. It’s bloody sad.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, then decisively slashed into her defense with a bishop, taking a rook and breaking her shield wall, putting her queen in jeopardy.

“Jerk,” she muttered, studying the board intently. Without looking up, she said softly, “We need a telepath, a sensitive of some sort, Steve. We got through that one by the hair of my chinny chin chin.”

“Agreed. I’m not inclined to wait for the Big Bad Wolf to take another shot at us. But all the best telepaths are mutants and I’m loathe to ask any of them to…expose themselves. Not with the bigotry they already face.”

They exchanged a deep look then, Bobbi nodding her agreement.

“I’ll put out some feelers,” she said.

From the open window to the communal kitchen, a timer sounded. 

“Excuse me,” Bobbi said, setting up a pawn sacrifice, then rising to her feet. “Bruce, tag in; kick his ass. I’ve had this sudden urge to bake more lately. Don’t want the sourdough to burn.”


End file.
